The Darkest Hours
by Warrior of Ice
Summary: In the wastelands of Dpoint, a general doomed to wander until the end of watches the last horrific events unfold until a senshi's final moments grant him a catharsis that begins his road to absolution. 1st person, threepart
1. The Deepest Twilight

_The Deepest Twilight_

I am one of many lost souls who inhabit D-point, Beryl's domain. Unlike the others, I am fortunate enough, cursed enough, to remember my original name. Names have power: if a person knows your name, he has power over you. The bearer of a name has power as well, for even the simplest name can bring the bearer back to himself when all seems lost. Names are remembrance, and memories...are ghosts.

My name is known to very few among the living now; I have lost track of how much time has passed. After all, there is not much present at D-point to allow for an awareness of time. Indeed, why be aware of time's passing at all when you are one such as I? And yet I often lose track of my purpose. It comes with the territory, if you'll excuse the pun. My sense of humor is not what it once was.

So you want to know my name. As usual, no one listens to what I've been saying. You're as bad as Jadeite was. Knowledge of my name will bring you no power. I am dead, in case you haven't noticed. In fact, I am worse than dead – I am trapped at D-point for eternity.

You don't want power? You want to _understand_ me? Laughable. Understand this: I am beyond all help. I am a _murderer_. She called me that, with her very last breath, as those ocean-blue eyes closed in the most sacred of slumbers...

You ask again. Do you really want to know? Do you really want to know the darkness that lurks in my soul, the innate evil present in this ruined entity? Very well. You will be like all the others I have chanced to meet. All comforting and patronizing at first...and then the horror, the repulsion, the _loathing_ will spread over your face, the myriad emotions forming a direct reflection of how I view myself. You must really want to know my name.

I am the least of Endymion's generals, not because of our original ranking, but because I killed a fellow general. It wasn't even an accident. I murdered a man who meant more to me than my blood brother in cold blood, out of sheer spite. And so I have doubly sinned.

My name is Zoisite, third of the Shitennou. We were the Sky Kings who ruled the Earth and loved the senshi. But what is love, when men are weak? There is darkness in men's souls... My story is simple. As one of Prince Endymion's generals and closest friends, I held great power and influence on Earth. Of course, I wisely spent my time reading books in private and flirting with women in public. By the time I met Ami, I had a reputation of being a lady killer who preferred shapely blondes – the more brainless, the better. Who is Ami, you ask? I'm getting there, my impatient listener.

Ami is the woman I loved, who loved me in return. Ami is the name I want to hear a thousand times, every day of every year this universe exists, and even beyond then. Ami is the pure, sweet sound that I want to roll off my tongue for eternity. Ami is the woman I sacrificed for a whore.

Surprised? You should have known better.

You see, there once was a young noblewoman named Beryl. You are acquainted with the name, I believe? Perhaps not the woman. She was sweet once upon a time. Sweet on Prince Endymion, I mean. He flirted with her a little more than was wise, and one day, he lost his own heart. But he lost it not to Beryl, but to a curious little lunar bunny who wandered down to Earth one day and entranced him.

She turned out to be Princess Serenity of the Moon Kingdom. Our Endymion never does anything by halves, as you can see. Why bother with the ladies back home when you can have an exotic Moon princess and an all-out, intergalactic war?

In the end, Queen Serenity agreed to give her precious daughter to Endymion. While the celebrations flourished, the bitterness festered in Beryl's soul. She grew angry, sullen, and full of hatred. And all this poison was directed towards the princess, since at that point, she was still infatuated with Endymion.

So then the question arose: how to get to the most powerfully-protected princess in the universe? Through her guardians, of course. After all, Serenity was hopeless at self-defense.

And this is where Ami comes into play. You remember Ami, do you not? Ami is the senshi of Mercury, and one of Serenity's guardians. She dwells by her side yet, in her present incarnation. The senshi were so powerful in the Silver Millennium that even Beryl and the demon who promised her Endymion and the world on a silver platter embedded with Serenity's skull dared not challenge them.

But the Seven Shadows defeated them, you say. Of course. They were strong enough. But did you know, without us, the almighty Shitennou, Beryl would never have been able to set them free?

So how does one trap a senshi? Exploit her weaknesses, of course. Everyone has weaknesses, no matter how indomitable they seem, and the easiest frailty to prey upon is love. Each of the generals loved a senshi. It's truly amazing how things work out like that, isn't it? But then again, these things are _fate_. So Beryl got it into her scheming little head that she needed us on her side to steal Endymion back. Her plans were really quite stupid, actually. They worked because we proved stupider.

The senshi were the most famous, most beloved women (other than the two Serenitys) in the universe. There was no way that they would be allowed to marry the lowly little upstarts from Earth who thought they were on par with _planetary_ royalty. Even Endymion was not numbered among them; Earth was known as "that dinky little sphere with the audacity not to be a part of the Silver Alliance."

At the time of Serenity and Endymion's engagement, Ami was actually promised to a prince who had managed to unite all the clans of the Asteroid Belt under his banner. Admittedly, this was quite a feat, since the clans had spent the last eleven centuries trying to slaughter each other into oblivion.

Ami and I promised each other we would marry, somehow, someday, that she would break her engagement and that we would live happily every after. It was complete idiocy. Bad enough that Queen Serenity had allowed her daughter to marry the Prince of Earth. Her word was law: she was the focal point of the Silver Alliance, and she could marry her daughter to who she liked. But the _senshi_? It could never be allowed to happen.

Beryl's sneaky little spies were all over the Moon Palace at this point, and they overheard an argument between Ami and me. Do you know how often this memory has returned to haunt me? Hundreds of times. Thousands. Billions. An infinite number of times. You will see why...

* * *

I had been in a foul mood for a week, ever since I had proposed to her and she had refused me. Looking back, I suppose she had good reason: what a bad husband I would have made. Actually, you could say the timing was not quite right, then, for a marriage. Probably because I murdered her within the month. 

I looked at her coldly. "_I don't believe you. You were smiling at him, laughing with him...and you say you won't marry him?_"

Her eyes blazed. How I loved the shape of those eyes, their clear ocean blue, the long black lashes. "_What would you have me do? Insult him for no good reason? He's a good man. It's not his fault we cannot be together_."

"_He's a good man,_" I mimicked, rolling my eyes.

"_Stop it!_" she ordered.

I raised my eyebrows. "_Are you playing princess today, then? Are there some days you can be my lover, and other days you cannot?_"

She was absolutely furious now. "_You don't know what you're saying, Zoi._"

Through gritted teeth, I spat, "_I know _exactly_ what I'm saying. You were flirting with him._"

"_I wasn't flirting. I was being diplomatic, which is something you're doing very poorly at the moment._"

"_Are we on to criticizing my diplomacy now? I'm not tactful enough, not highborn enough, not _diplomatic_ enough for the almighty princess of Mercury, is that it?_"

She actually threw a book across the room. I'd never even seen her dog-ear a page before that day, but she hurled it like she wanted to kill something – me, probably. A pity she hadn't done it. "_What is _wrong_ with you today, Zoisite? What is it that you want from me?_"

I wanted everything, and I believed I could have it. "_You know what I want. I want you to marry me. I want you to be my wife. I want to be with you always_."

Her face crumpled. "_You know I can't_," she whispered. "_Even if we could marry now, we could never be together. You belong on Earth. All your powers are Earth-based. All the seers are talking about an era of darkness that approaches, and I won't be here much longer. I'll need to fight whatever threatens the universe_."

You can imagine how this made me feel. She hadn't mean to, of course, but it is never wise to force a man to face his impotence. She could fight, I couldn't, and that was that. She slammed down the lid on the possibility of us ever being together it, crushed it as easily as a withered petal crumbles into clouds of dust, and then nothingness.

"_I care you – isn't that enough? I love you. I truly do. I love you more than anyone I have ever loved before._"

I refused the most precious thing she could ever have given to me, the thing I had been searching for ever since I had first met her.

"_It's not enough._"

I grabbed my cloak from where I had thrown it carelessly across a chair and hurled myself from that lovely refuge of blue walls and delicate furniture where it always looked out of place, where I always felt out of place. Everything inside it reminded me of her, and the fact that the clumsy, long-haired general could never be a part of her life started killing me even before Beryl did.

"_Where are you going?_" she cried in distress. I had told her I had the afternoon free, and she had canceled an important meeting just to stay with me, to preserve what precious time we had left. To this day, I wonder if she knew something I had not. Perhaps Princess Rei of the psychic powers had cautioned her, perhaps she hadn't.

"_I'm leaving_," I threw the words at her over my shoulder. "_Since I'm obviously not wanted in a world where I'm useless nobody in comparison to the great power of the _senshi" If she had asked me when I was coming back, I would have replied "Never." But that wouldn't have been true, in the end. Better if it had been.

"_Zoi, please_," she pleaded with me. Ami never begged. Never. It gave me a perverse sense of pleasure...power...then, I was so angry. It sickens me now, to think of her tears and that maltreated, beloved book of hers lying lifelessly on the sapphire-hued carpet. "_Don't leave. I promise you – I won't marry him. I swear I won't! I'll break it off!_" She was crying then, but I was crying too, inside. "_What will it take for you to stay?_"

I paused for a long moment. She stood behind me, I knew, her face pale and her eyes huge in her face. I saw that look again recently, without the heartache in her eyes. It had been replaced by fear and hatred, you see. Naturally. We were enemies, I was evil, her ultimate task was to destroy me, and life was as simple as that.

"_I'll ask you one last time. Will you marry me?_" I looked over my shoulder at her. Everything rested on her answer.

"_I can't_," she whispered. I was good enough for her to love me, important enough to her that she would break off such a crucial engagement, but, in the end, not good enough for her to marry.

The balance shifted, tilted irreversibly in favor of the side of evil. I sometimes imagine that if she had lied to me that day, not that she would ever have done so, this never would have happened. Funny how the folly of one man can bring the downfall of a whole world, isn't it? But it's not funny.

I teleported back to Earth that very afternoon, brushing off surprised queries from my friends. It was in the gardens, by Endymion's precious roses, that Beryl found me. She sidled up like a crab, trying to play her previous role of flighty court lady in the middle of a (bad) attempt to seduce the handsome general. I scowled at her, wanting to be left alone, even though Endymion had forbidden us to speak cruelly to her. He hadn't realized how demented she was at that point. I realize now that his blindness to her love may have been cruller than anything we, his generals, could have said to her.

I won't recount our whole conversation. It would be detrimental to my ego, you see, to recall my imbecility. And...besides...my memory is not always clear of those times. I suspect it is an aftereffect of a great deal of torture. I am not sure if I was the one being tortured or the one doing the torturing now.

In the end, I remember asking breathlessly, "_So you promise – you swear on your soul! – that you will grant me the power? Power that isn't earth-based, that could match the power of the senshi's?_"

Beryl said she had gotten it from a long-unearthed source that held the magic of the gods; after thorough questioning, I determined that what she had said and seen sounded reasonable, according to the accounts of ancient sorcerers. It turned out she had awakened not the magic of the gods, but of the demons. It was Metallia she had managed to revive.

"_Yes,_" she answered sleekly, "_that is what you want, is it not? She will love you then, and no one will protest a union with such a strong man_." She caressed my shoulder. I shook her off impatiently, not noticing that her newfound claws cut through the expensive material. Nothing but the best for the foppish general who cared for nothing but his clothes and his conquests. "_Is it a deal_?"

I nodded slowly. She smiled. "_All you need to do is touch this orb and swear on it_," she said, holding out a ball, full of swirling greenish-yellow light against the dark fog that flooded the globe. I glanced at it askance until she coaxed, "_The orb will grant you the power you so avidly desire._"

My last resistance: "_Do you swear that she won't be harmed? That no one will be hurt?_" I was already feeling guilty about my behavior, with good reason, and planning on apologizing to Ami and doing whatever I could, even if the deal fell through. But wouldn't it be nice, I had thought to myself, if I could also show her that I had found a solution to our problems and relieve her anxiety over protecting Serenity from whatever dark force was coming at us? I just hadn't realize then that the dark force would be _me_.

Her teeth gleamed whitely in the sunlight. There were no fangs then. "_I swear, Zoisite – on my soul_." I now realize that the problem with the bargain is that Beryl didn't have a soul at that point, not anymore. If you swear on something that doesn't exist, well, what good is that? Belief only goes so far, good intentions only go so far, with certain things.

So this is my story. You know the rest. My other friends were somehow ensnared. Don't ask me how; I don't know, I don't want to know, if it could have been by me. We were brainwashed, forgot the senshi, awakened the Seven Shadows, invaded the Moon Palace, so on, and so forth. I met my demise at Mars's hands, or should I say, her flames. She took a somewhat indecent pleasure in roasting me to death. I still blame Jadeite for her foul mood that day.

One moment, please. I sense the arrival of visitors. Company is quite rare up here, you know. The youma limbs do not count as sentient company; they appear periodically in accordance with Beryl's foul moods, and sometimes I even get crystallized specimens for company. Exhibit A, General Jadeite. No? You don't want to admire Jadeite? You want to come with me instead and see who has come? Jadeite will be crushed that you don't want to admire his good looks, you know..

You're sure? Let us go, then, you and I. How many visitors are there, you ask? Hm. I'm a little rusty at this, you know. The dead are not allowed to use magic. But if you'll look over here, you'll see five distinctive sets of footprints, and a little up ahead...

* * *

"There is darkness in men's souls" is a quote from Albert Camus's The Plague


	2. Nightfall

_Nightfall_

The last people I ever expected to see at D-point were the sailor senshi and yet here they are, short skirts and all, shimmering with the remnants of the teleportation spell. Although the magic helps, to a degree, senshi fukus are simply not what one expects to see at subzero temperatures. Then again, their utter lack of preparation strengthens my firm belief that their presence here stems from complete insanity rather than courage or stupidity.

None of them belong here; not even Mercury, whose control extends over ice, can change this land. The senshi, on their most fundamental level, are light. With that comes warmth and color. This world is dazzling in spite of, because of, its desolation; there is nothing but endless stretches of pure, pure white, an alabaster beyond the finest marbles mined from the earth's innards. Nothing thrives but my despair.

It grows and grows as I fall in step with them, overcoming any chance denial would have had. If I look back, I would see only five sets of heel- and boot-prints, as I can no longer leave traces of my presence. If I look forward, all I would see is whiteness meeting the intense blue of the cloudless sky at the horizon line, far in the distance. But I don't look back, and I don't look forward, because from this point on, the past no longer matters and they have no future. All I can see is Ami's face and Ami's eyes.

Is it a very great sin that even though her expression is more grave than it has ever been and the fear lurks in her eyes, I think she is the loveliest thing I have ever seen? She is more afraid than she has ever been in her life, even when the Moon Kingdom fell, for she was so much older then. And yet, she is so beautiful that I cannot think much past that fact.

Venus chatters, forgetting how to calm her nerves as she tries to map out a strategy, and Mars's foreboding silence gives her face and aura a shadowy quality. Jupiter helps Moon over the packed snowdrifts, always on her guard and prepared to combat any physical threat which may approach. Far to the right, Mercury tracks the landscape with sharp eyes, managing to glance at her supercomputer from time to time as she searches for a route into Beryl's lair. She speaks when she has something important to say, and they listen.

Jupiter mentions that they have been walking forever – has it really been so? I am a better judge of eternity than they are, but I cannot say I am without bias.

It seems like scant seconds since I have been in Ami's presence again, drinking in the sight of her, her voice, her habits, her quiet mannerisms that make you smile even on the most hideous of days.

Can you imagine what it must be like for me, seeing her again this way? Imagine the rosiest, most golden memory you have of an ex-lover, and you come face to face with them on a street corner. Something about her face, her build, the way she walks, may pull at you, or it may not, but you walk past. Some time later, it strikes you, that was her. Or your friend walking alongside you, who knew the both of you asks, "Hey…wasn't that the girl you dated during sophomore year of college?"

Time collapses, and you realize suddenly that at one point in your life, she meant more to you than anything in the world. She was your world: she was what you lived, breathed, believed in, and thought of every second of the day – or as close to it as possible. And all that wanting and loving just disappeared in what seems like a snap of the fingers.

You might look back, catch the last glimpse of glossy hair swinging over her shoulders, and remember for just a moment what it was like to be in love with her. It'll seem strange to you that the feeling faded so quickly when it once seemed a thing so indestructible it would outlive the craters of the moon, or at least the myths of Atlantis. There might be a moment of nostalgia for what could have been, or even should have been, but unless it's meant to be, it'll pass.

It wasn't like that for me.

The last time I saw Ami, I saw her as Mercury. And even though they are very similar, they are also quite different. We faced each other in battle, and I had nothing but the deepest scorn for her. I didn't even feel enough towards her to loathe her. I had nothing but anger and frustration that these pathetic little children were foiling my plans. Chance always seemed to pull them through at the last minute. It was nothing personal. I barely differentiated her from the rest of the senshi, just noted that she was a bit smarter than the rest and a bit weaker on the fighting front.

But once I died, everything came back to me. Every kiss, every smile, every hug, every sweet nothing and every angry word that passed between us, and also the feeling of my sword passing into her body and jarring against her ribcage before I wrenched it free, smeared thickly with the dark blood that heralded her death.

I look at her now, pulling in every minute detail I can, encasing every second in my memory so that once this is over, I can go back and remember, and believe that for a few moments, she was all of my world again. It hurts to see her here, walking resolutely on to certain doom, even as I cannot tear my eyes from her. Her computer beeps suddenly, so at last, I look away. There should be nothing, but what is that strangely-amorphous figure in the distance?

...no. I don't understand. There is no reason the Doom and Gloom Girls should be around D-point, unless... Unless...

I have always loathed the Doom and Gloom Girls, for no discernable reason up until now. They were cruel to beyond the point of sadistic, seductive, and ranked among Beryl's top warriors. Of course, that tells you something about how pathetic her army is nowadays, myself included. But Moon and her senshi don't stand a chance against them.

The ground heaves violently, and Jupiter goes soaring into the air above a mound of ice, caught in the clutches of one of the Girls. The rest of the senshi scramble to their feet, calling to her, and I can only stand here dumbly, my hands at my sides.

Even if I had put them out to catch you, Ami, you would still have fallen through them. And yet, you still feel more insubstantial to me.

Jupiter went quietly in the Silver Millennium, if I recall correctly. This time her lightning flashed across the skies, filling the plain with her presence for one blinding moment before she was gone. I cannot grieve for her, because still, no matter how foolish it is, my thoughts are with the living. How much longer?

They go on, at last, saddened and warier and already older in seconds. Moon offers up the Silver Crystal in hopes of saving the rest of them. She has yet to understand that Beryl's craving goes beyond that the desire for her power. Metallia wants the power. What Beryl seeks is vengeance.

The mists rise suddenly, but when you're all but nothingness, you can see clearly. The second of the Girls has disguised herself as an adolescent boy. Possessed of lank brown hair, he slumps over in his bonds, apparently unconscious.

Mercury recognizes him, calls him by name – Greg. A classmate? A friend? Perhaps even a crush. But surely nothing more important than that. Surely.

Come on, Ami, you're smarter than that. It's a trap.

He doesn't need your help.

He can't make you forget who you are, where you are, your sense of self-preservation, damn it!

She can't hear me, of course.

Of course.

I knew it was coming all along, even before I saw them at D-point. I knew it the minute I awoke to find myself here, with no body and no power but every single memory I ever possessed, and then some. If I knew it would happen, why does it still hurt?

Is it not enough that I killed you once, but now I was made to see you die again, completely powerless? When I killed you, you were angry. You were furious with me, and so sad, and in pain, and afraid for Serenity and your fellow senshi. But you did not fear for yourself.

This time, I watched the terror fill your eyes. I watched you die a second death, this one even more senseless than the first, and still we aren't together. Where is the justice in it?

* * *

One by one, Venus and Mars were picked off. I felt them go, with three of the Girls. But I stayed. Serenity went on to battle Queen Beryl and my prince, and still I stayed. I stayed past the time when the blood stopped dripping. I stayed as true night fell over the Kingdom. 


	3. Midnight to Dawnbreak

_Midnight to Dawnbreak_

I was kneeling before Mercury's funereal mound when the ground began to shake again. This time, though, there were no senshi left to bury under the frozen crust. Without a doubt, Beryl, Moon, or possibly both had a hand in the strange, tearing vibrations emanating from the epicenter of the Dark Kingdom. Vaguely, I wondered if Princess Serenity had died again. When her mother the queen had passed, the moon had all but ripped itself apart. Would the earth now do the same?

Before I could ponder what the effects of floating around in space amid the ruins of the earth would be on my already questionable sanity, the tremors began again. This time, they were in my immediate vicinity – and within seconds, Mercury's icy tomb split open.

I watched disbelievingly as she rose slowly from the dark opening, looking almost exactly as she had looked when they first set foot on D-point. Only she wasn't returned in the flesh but in the spirit, and she was no more solid than I was.

She could see me now. I saw the translucent blue of her eyes shining under scarcely more corporeal eyelashes, and the recognition in them as they focused on me. I always thought I was right to stop believing in miracles.

"Zoisite!"

The time I had to hope filled a space shorter than the span of two heartbeats. Fate was cruel enough to add horror to the fury and scorn I had felt the last time we had come face to face, for these three emotions came through strongly in the intonation of her lovely voice. She still saw only the monster and none of the memories.

Doomed by the all too human desire to persevere and a longstanding habit of overestimating my own efficacy, I gave in to the insurmountable urge to try and reach her just once.

"Ami, believe me, I'm not here to hurt you. I'm not who I was, I'm –" I stopped then. I wasn't sure who I was and wasn't anymore.

"No. You are evil, and you are a liar. You will not keep me from her!"

"I'm not trying to – I need you to listen to me –"

"Stay away from me. Stay away from me!" she cried, panicked now. Before I could respond, the defiance, written most clearly in the angry furrow of her brow, vanished. Her expression smoothed again, and a certain radiance radiated outwards with the calm. Her princess's need had the power to transcend my own.

Admittedly, the fissures in my heart were trivial compared to those which were racing across D-point. My situation was far from life-threatening.

It wasn't the first time I hadn't come first in her life. It wasn't the first time I had felt entirely defeated before I asked. When I had made my impossible demands on her in the Silver Millennium, my fear was that my wish would never be granted. This time, I dreaded that I would never have the chance to ask her again.

Why is Serenity the only one in the world who can have this effect on her?

Serenity is her princess, and you are only her past lover, you might have told me. If I loved her enough to put her before Endymion, does the fault lie with me? Does it mean that we were never meant to be together?

The world was about to end, you might have argued. This is very true. But if I had known that sometime, somewhere, I would be her world and she mine, I would wait five hundred millennia for her. Why does this dream of mine seem so impossible? It is only as far away as absolution.

Unlike Nephrite, I have never been able to predict the future. But all the shades of the past are mine to read, and they tell me the distance between me and my desire is infinite.

Serenity may be the only person who can convey such peace of mind on Ami, but I had seen Ami like this once before, in the Silver Millennium. She had been playing her harp alone in her room, and I had snuck into her parlor and seen her reflection in the mirror she practiced in front of. She used it to check the positioning of her fingers on the strings.

For the scant minutes before she sensed my presence, she had never seemed so far away from me before. Her eyes flickered rapidly beneath lowered lids, a contrast to the way her graceful fingers seemed to be wandering across the strings to drench the room in liquid notes. Everything else but her eyes and fingers had been absolutely still. For her, there had been nothing but the glory of the sound and the continuation of it. I wondered if it was possible to keep pouring yourself into the notes until there was nothing left of you physically, and the stream of music flew out the window with your soul to go where it would.

She had seemed practically ethereal to me; I had felt completely nonexistent. That day, her eyes had flown open to meet mine in the mirror, and her fingers had stilled, silencing the music.

In the present time, I hovered before her, mortally afraid of the reaction I would provoke in her. I couldn't bear to walk beside her and not have her see me, but I couldn't bear to see the expression on her face when she looked at me. After all, there is music, and there is Serenity, and then, there is me.

I was spared the reinforcement of the realization that out of all these things that had once been an integral part of her life, I was the one that didn't belong, that had caused her the most pain both in the past and now. She spoke in a faraway voice, so softly that if we had stood on the banks of the quietest babbling brook, its murmurings would have drowned her out.

"I'm coming. Hold on, Serenity. We'll all be there with you soon." She disappeared in a flash of blue-tinged light, and at the periphery of my vision, I saw three other colored beams join it: green, red, and orange.

* * *

A shadow falls over me, deeper and thicker than the others. If I have no form, how is it that I can feel that I am weeping through every pore of my being? If I have no form, why am I hunched on the ground and wishing that I would fall asleep in this deathly cold and be sent into oblivion? I peer up at the intruder, wanting to be left alone. His identity makes me let out a ragged croak. "My prince…" 

He looks down at me, glowing gold around the edges.

"Are you dead as well?"

He smiles now, and it is a warmer smile than it was in the past. "The battle is over, Zoisite. This battle, at least. We'll need you in the war."

"I cannot serve you anymore, Endymion. I have no power, no…" No will to do anything if my future is empty.

"Come back with me." It sounds more like an offer than a command.

The tawny glow around him no longer hurts my eyes. "I cannot." It hurts to hope. Sometimes, you start believing something you thought was completely impossible is attainable. When you realize again that you can't have it, it kills you even more than accepting reality the first time around does.

"I betrayed you, and her, and you died, and…"

"Well, I'm very much alive now, aren't I?"

I stare at him in disbelief.

Endymion sighs, sounding somewhat impatient. "I don't believe in redemption without price, Zoisite. Come fight with us in the war, on the side your heart and mind are sworn to."

"I cannot serve you as I did before, Endymion. I put and I will put Ami before you." I can hardly believe my audacity. And yet, arguing with an illusion cannot do me much harm, can it?

He smirks at me, an expression which makes my jaw drop open in surprise rather than annoyance. No daydream of mine would do such a thing. Would it?

"I would choose Usako over you, but fortunately, I don't have to." More seriously, he adds, "I don't believe in the system that was established during the Silver Millennium. I think it caused more harm than good, and it was an unstable and unsustainable situation. There will be times in battle when you and Ami will be harmed in defense of your own lives, but also for Serenity and me, because we pose the greatest hope for the future. I want it to be a choice rather than a duty. But the rest of the time, you deserve to live your lives for yourselves. Otherwise, it won't be a life worth living.

"I'm going to have a second chance, Zoisite. I too know how it feels to be brainwashed by Metallia now. It's time to go back and make amends. Do you really want to stay here?" He flings out an armored arm, gesturing at the barren white expanse all around us.

"I… I have Jadeite for company here." And the youma limbs and the bodies of the Doom and Gloom Girls.

"Wrong. You haven't spoken to him since before you died, and I'm taking him with me. Why is it taking you so damn long to agree, Zoisite? I want to be reborn already."

I scuff my metaphysical boot against the frozen crust. "This is all I know, Endymion. I know this wasteland, and I know my misery, and I know my guilt. I know how Ami feels about me now, and I have no faith in my ability to change her mind."

Endymion scowls at me, and I feel two years old again. Perhaps five. Jadeite was the one getting into scrapes right out of the cradle. I bided my time. "I should give you a good kick in the behind, only my foot would pass through it right now."

I can only look back at him, uncaring if all the sorrow shows on my face. "She despises me, Endymion."

"She needs you," he says more gently. "I need you, but she may need you more. Do you want to watch her meet Urawa Ryo again, and perhaps convince herself that she loves him? Do you want her to find knights who are less worthy of her, who won't be able to catch her when she falls?"

"I didn't even try when she did," I whisper.

His eyes are drilling through me, boring into my skull so I cannot look away. "That fault lies with your faith and not with hers. So next time, stick out your arms and put those muscles to some use if they haven't atrophied already. If you don't catch her, at least be there so she can yell at you for it."

"Ami doesn't yell." Does she? The idea is strangely appealing.

"She does in this life," he counters. "There's nothing here for you, Zoisite. Come back with me."

I look at his outstretched hand warily.

"Be selfless and do it for her sake, for my sake, and for the future. Be selfish and do it for your own. I can't promise you it'll be love at first sight. I can't even promise you it'll happen – but I can put a new page on top of all the other mistakes so you can make new ones in the revision."

Slowly, I place my hand in his and let him pull me upwards.

"All right. But if you're lying about this or turn out to be some crazed imagining of mine, I'll curse you until the end of eternity."

He grins at me as D-point melts away to be replaced by a new place, one I don't recognize. "Not to worry. My money's on you, Zoisite. But it had better take less than five hundred millennia."


End file.
